Under the Sail of the Flying Dutchman
by JxstHayesHere
Summary: Tying up loose ends on the deck of the Pearl. After Elizabeth and Will are permanently reunited, they head off until the unknown to save the soul of Davy Jones and return him to Calypso. Threats and ransoms, swordplay and mystery, a little bit-ok, a lot-of romance, and more.
1. Ten Years Later (Prologue)

Ten Years Later

The narrow planks, slick with salt water and age, flex slightly under his weight. His sailor's boots make a rhythmic _click-click_ as he walks down the gangway. His black hair, tied into a bandana, whips over his face and his open shirt flutters above the wide leather belt. William Turner, captain of the _Flying Dutchman_, searches the deserted dock. I, behind the trees, watch for a moment: catching every turn of his head, savoring the anticipation of the next twelve hours for just a moment.

Then I run to him.

I knock him into the sand, and it's everywhere, the sand and the sea and the salt and _him_, all rolled into one. We're in the surf, the waves crashing around us, when finally I find his face. He pulls me upright, and we're sitting together in the waves.

"Elizabeth." My name, a whisper on his lips.

"Will." His, jumping from me to him, and then his lips are on mine, the sea salt again, my hands on his chest, finding the scar that took him away from me. I can feel how he has become the sea, is part of it: his kiss is at once calm as the doldrums and wild as a maelstrom, his body beneath mine rocks like a ship on the high seas, and his touch reminds me of sea spray over the rail. _Shh, shh, shh, _the water says.

The sea takes him ten years at a time, but it will not take him from me today.

The sun is setting. He's getting ready to go back to the _Dutchman_. We find his boots, his bandana, his shirt, and prepare to let the sea be between us again. We look longingly up the beach, then simply at each other.

"Wait for me," he whispers.

I step forward. "Will— " My voice falters "—I always will."

He steps toward me, too. The sun, it's only halfway over the horizon. I step forward again, hands moving out, eyes closed. But he's not there.

I open my eyes and find him already walking toward the waves. I stop—should I let him go?—but the call is greater than I can contain.

"Will!" I break into a run down the beach, kicking up sand, tears on my face, until I crash into him and then I'm kissing him and he's holding me so tightly it gives the illusion that he'll never let go. Can I tell him how much I'll miss him in the next ten years?

She knows I have to go.

I know he has to leave.

I take her hands off of my face. The sun's at the horizon. We're out of time. She steps back, and I look at her face, capturing every detail. She's so beautiful, even more so than the sea. I remind myself she won't be this way forever. She'll age and die, but I won't.

Sadness draws over his face. He kisses my fingers one last time. I open my mouth to say something, anything, but he's already gone. Turning into the waves, melting into the water.

"Stay," I say.

_Shh, shh, _the waves reply.


	2. Chapter 1

_Elizabeth_

I look out over the bow of the ship. Somewhere in the sea full of souls lurks the one we came here for: Jones's. Calypso, beside me, is trembling, clutching Jack's compass—I am afraid of these creatures, but to her every trace of eerie vapor is a hope.

Jack's warning lurks over the ship. He stands in the stern, hands clasped around the hilt of his sword, muttering. _Jones didn't have a heart, Calypso, _he'd said. _Keep in mind that he might not have a soul either. _But I knew that even if that were true, Calypso would have come anyway. _He had more soul than some men with hearts, _she'd said.

How true.

I know Calypso is right. Will's soul was not carved out of him along with his heart. He still loves me—just as Davy still loves Calypso. With all of his soul.

"Elizabeth." Jack's voice grounds me. "We need to be watching. Forward. That way." He raises his arm—releasing the perfume of salt and sweat and old rum—to point ahead. "The souls, they get _angry._"

"Shut up, Jack," I say, stepping back. My voice is strangely loud in the gloom.

He touches his hat. "Don't say I didn't warn you."

I ignore him, turning instead to Calypso. She's staring straight ahead, black eyes unblinking, figure unmoving. She hasn't spoken since the argument.

"Are we safe?"

She turns to me. Her eyes meet mine, boring down, peering into me like a fisherman examines a cloudy sky for chance of rain. "The souls have an uneasy rest."

"Anything helpful to say?" Jack steps closer to her.

The force of her glare makes him step backward. "We only come to wake one. Don't wake the whole sea with him."

With that, she straightens and sets her eyes on the horizon once more.

Jack looks at me. "She's touchy."

I snort with annoyed laughter. "You don't know what she's going through."

"Love, I know _exactly _what she's going through." He touches my chin and turns around, heels clicking showily on the wooden deck. I shake my head and resume my watch of the ghostly waters.


	3. Chapter 2

_Elizabeth_

A splash.

My head jerks to the right, where something—or someone—just broke the surface. I see nothing, but Calypso is focused on the spot as well.

"What was that?" I whisper.

"Something strange," she replies.

"Jack, I—"

"Shh," he says.

"No. Jack, what's—"

"I said be quiet!" he snaps. He scans the water, right hand on his gun, left outstretched.

"Jack, be wise," Calypso says.

The silence is heavy. The swish of souls in the water is gone, replaced by deadness in the air.

"There's something down there," he murmurs.

I open my mouth to ask another question when _it _breaks the surface again. Fully. Tentacles burst into the air in a shower of spray. Jack's gun goes off—one, two, like lightning—and mine is out and in my hands but I don't know where to shoot, it's _everywhere_.

"Calypso!" I whirl around to see the goddess standing in the storm of tentacles. She turns around and her black eyes are green.

Her voice is an echoing rasp. "I warned Jack not to wake too many souls!"

I look at him, cutting left and right and slowly being overwhelmed. "Jack!"

It'll take me too. If I join the fight, it'll take me too.

Jack's sword flies across the deck.

I hate him. Let him go down with his beast.

_Bang, bang _goes the six-shot gun.

He's going to die.

What am I doing?

My gun goes up. _I've got so much to lose._

Will.

Jack.

Will, I'm sorry.

Will.

I love you.

I shoot. Once, twice, three times, my bullets finding their homes, the tentacles lashing out, taking me into the sea.

I look up.

The souls make the water murky.

Then the eerie light fades black.


	4. Chapter 3

_Will_

**_Two weeks later_**

It's been twenty years since I stabbed the heart of Davy Jones.

Today, I set foot on land. Today, I see Elizabeth.

My hands shake as I press the wheel in a new direction, away from the sun's death, toward the sandy beach. I wish I could feel a heartbeat in my chest, I wish I could feel it quicken with excitement; I wish I had more than a day with her.

I love her.

The reality that confronts me is painful; she's aging. I'm not. I remember my fight with Calypso. _I won't watch her die!_

_It's not your choice, _she'd said. _You can change many things, William Turner, but you of all people should know that you couldn't touch fate._

It doesn't matter, I think.

Worry tomorrow.

The grating sensation of the ship on the sands brings a gasp to my lips.

Ten years, they made me wait. And I don't have to wait another second.

My boots hit the shallow water in a spray of salt and sand, and I'm running, running up the beach, my ship vanishing behind me, feeling for the first time in twenty years like I had a heart and it was beating.

"Elizabeth!" I call.

I don't see her.

I keep running, up the beach, knowing that she's playing games with me. "Elizabeth! Elizabeth Turner!"

No response.

I stop, turning in a full circle in the sand. _Where is she?_

She couldn't have forgotten.

She isn't here.

I run back and forth for an hour, maybe two, screaming her name. Elizabeth. Elizabeth. I love you.

I drop to my knees in the sand, burying my fingers in the earth I haven't felt for ten years. Ten years, away from my home, away from my love, and _she isn't here_.

Something rises in my throat, something painful and hard. I take great handfuls of sand and throw them down the beach as hard as I can, sobs building in my throat. This pain is different than being stabbed, than being shot, than having my heart carved out of my body. This feels like all of those things, rolled into one, pressing out from inside my chest like a scream of desperation.

"Elizabeth, I miss you!" It bursts out. My tears mix with the sand and I sink down again, hands pressed to my chest in the place where my heart used to be.

I'm not heartless enough to keep from crying.

"Do you want her back?"

The voice is raspy and hard, carving my hopelessness like a blade. "Calypso?"

I turn around, and there she is. Her hands are outstretched and her black eyes see straight through me. "What are you talking about?"

"She's somewhere in your sea of souls, William."

I stumble backwards. "She forgot."

"She didn't forget," Calypso whispers.

I raise my arms. "You're wrong. She isn't dead."

She regards me evenly. "Do you want her back?"

_Elizabeth._

"I would do anything to bring her back."

She gestures to the water's edge, where my ship, my _Dutchman_, is rising. "Then come aboard."


	5. Chapter 4

_Will_

These are my seas. I know my way through the souls and through the levels of night. Calypso guides me to her, following the trail she left. I can feel her getting closer but so far no ghostly forms have looked like my Elizabeth. I focus ahead, listening to Calypso's instructions and feeling every movement of the timber under my feet, waiting, waiting—

"There," Calypso says.

I freeze. Yes, I see her. She's in her little boat on the surface, hair cut like I remember, twice as beautiful as when I left. Her three-cornered hat is tipped slightly left, like her quirked smile.

"Elizabeth," I breathe.

Calypso focuses on her, and we watch her together, her in her boat.

"How do we get her back?" I say. "Throw her a line."

Calypso looks at me. "It's not that easy, William. A soul for a soul. There's your price."

I look over my crew.

Calypso leans in close, lips brushing my ear. "You said you would do anything."

I nod, too stunned to speak.

"You can always roll your dice."

There they are. The same table at which I gambled my soul and my father's against Davy Jones sits in the center of the deck. Four steps, and I sit down.

"Who will bet?"

I stare into the faces of my crew, the men I know well. Whom can I ask to give up their soul? Whom can I beat in a game of dice and condemn to the end of the world?

"I will."

The voice, I know it. The walk. The way he sits in a chair with one long leg in front of him and the other tucked under the seat.

Bootstrap.

I want to say something, to stop him—but his dice are cast, under the worn leather cup.

"My soul," he whispers, "or my freedom."

"You don't have to do this," I say.

He meets my eyes. His face is that of a seafarer, worn and weathered by the sun and salt. His eyes are squinted slightly from years of lookout duty.

Many years.

"William. I've lived a full life—and a life longer than any man should have to endure. Your love for Elizabeth will live past that—and past the lives of your crew, and this ship—if she is returned to you. You deserve what I never had. Love is stronger than you know." He shakes the dice. "Two fours."

I look at him quietly. My father. His bet is placed, and he can't take it back. His next move will destroy him. I look at my dice: three threes, two fours, and a six.

"Thank you," I say.

He nods.

I take a deep breath. "Four fours."

His eyes are closed as he says it. "Twelve fours. Call me a liar, Will."

"Look at me," I say.

He does.

Suddenly, I know why he's doing this. I know why he's giving me his soul. _Love is stronger than you know. _

I say it quietly. "Bootstrap, you are a liar."

Calypso steps forward quickly. She's muttering, some sort of an incantation, and I turn away. The water boils and the ship rocks.

_Did you love me, Bootstrap? Is that what you meant?_

My eyes close. I don't want to see him disappear, but at the same time I have to. I made him look me in the eyes as I destroyed him.

But by the time I turn around, he's gone. He's gone, and Elizabeth stands in his place.

Calypso stands between us. "You know that the same rules that apply to you are now hers as well?"

"She's bound to the _Dutchman_?"

"Yes."

What will she want?

"I understand," I say.

Calypso steps aside. "A sacrifice for the greater good is rewarded with the greatest good."

"Elizabeth," I whisper.

She meets my eyes. "Will."

Then we collide, her hands pressing into my chest, my arms wrapping around her waist. Her lips are inches from mine and I take just a second to feel her, to comprehend her, to be sure she's here.

I try to tell her everything I've been feeling without using words, pulling her tighter and tighter and not letting go and kissing her like we are at the world's end. Her fingers tangle into my hair and run down my face and back and I can feel her laughter.

I hold her back for a moment, looking her up and down and catching my breath. She looks the same to me as she did when I left.

There's no need to tell her how I feel. She knows the pain I felt when I didn't find her on that beach and how much I missed her every day I was gone.

"I missed ten years with you, Will Turner," she says quietly.

I look her in the eyes. "And now we have ten lifetimes. But I won't miss another second."

With that, I lean in. And for a moment, I could have sworn I felt my heart beating.


	6. Chapter 5

_Elizabeth_

I look up at the wheel. He stands there, high-heeled boots planted firmly on the deck, body supple and moving with the ship, arms flexing and bending as he turns the wheel. Will stares straight ahead, keeping watch over the tumultuous waters and threatening pitch-black underworld sky.

I go to the rail. The sea casts and eerie light over the ship, turning the planking on the sides a ghastly green. The gray soul-boats float by, ghostly oars hitting the water with an even cadence and propelling the little dinghies into the ether. When I look over the side of this ship on this sea, my greatest fear is seeing someone I loved or someone I knew. Day after day I search for Jack's soul, for Gibbs's, and, most importantly and for other reasons, Davy Jones's.

My heels click on the deck as I go below. I need to talk to Calypso.

I follow the sound of her chanting into her tiny room. Scintillating potions and odd accouterments are scattered over the low wooden tables and splintering floorboards. The sorceress is sitting upright on the bed, eyes sharp as blades and seeming to carve into my mind.

Her tattooed hands clench the edge of the bed. "What news?" she rasps.

"We're looking," I say. "All day and all night."

"You won't find him here," she says. "The ship doesn't sail the paths of true night, those paths where the most tortured souls wander back and forth…" she trails off. "Those places are where the soul of Davy Jones waits for me."

"We will find him." My voice shakes. _I can't make this promise, only Will can make this promise… _"We will sail wherever we need to sail to find him—whether we need to wait ten years to venture onto land to do it or barter time from fate himself."

Calypso meets my eyes and I find the courage to stare her back. "Find the way." She turns around on the bed and faces the wall.

I wait for her for another second, then leave, closing the door carefully behind me. Did I just make a promise I couldn't keep?

I ascend the ladder and resume my watch at the rail, hoping against hope that I see his soul and make my word unnecessary.


	7. Chapter 6

_Will_

"How is she?" I lean up against the rail beside Elizabeth, placing one hand on her waist.

She doesn't take her eyes off the ghostly sea. "I'm afraid she's going mad."

"She can't go mad. She's a goddess." I turn and look at her in profile. "We'll find him."

She turns to me. "How? We have no way of reaching Jack and his compass. The most help Calypso will give is hours of chanting in that room she has."

"We don't even need to find him," I say. " She can go off on her own. I have a cycle I have to complete every day."

She tips her hat to the left. "Will, she brought me back from the dead. For you. I have to repay her. This is the only way, and you know it."

I sigh slightly and she leans in, touching her lips to mine for the briefest instant. "I know," I murmur.

She turns and looks back out over the sea, out to the horizon, and I feel a profound wave of sadness for her. I tore her away from her life on land and imprisoned her on this gently swaying, unchanging deck for all eternity, and I've barely stopped to think about what she left behind and will never see again.

_Elizabeth_

I can feel his eyes on me, and I know what he's thinking. I wish there was a way for me to tell him that he made the right choice and I would make the same decision every time. But I can't concentrate; guilt at my promise to Calypso gnaws at my chest.

_Will_

I wrap one arm around her, and she turns to me, her hands curled on my chest, some unexplained worry in her eyes.

"I love you, Elizabeth Turner."

She smiles slightly, and I close my eyes and lean into her, but she's not there.

I open my eyes, and she's walking across the deck, heels clicking sharply. She turns around for a second and I see the satisfied, catlike grin curling her lips.

I chuckle softly and follow her up to the wheel.


	8. Chapter 7

_Elizabeth_

When I wake up, he's gone. Cautious moonlight filters through the porthole and falls on the smooth floor. I slip out of bed in my nightdress, pull my coat around my shoulders, and head up onto the deck.

He's standing at the prow in a cool bath of moonlight. The silver reflects off his pistol and sword and whitens his hair. I can see his profile, high cheekbones thrown into sharp relief against the shadows of his face. His hands are graceful on the wheel, correcting the course of the ship with tiny movements. Black hair fights to escape the red bandana tied around his forehead.

Something peculiar in my chest reaches out to him. He looks so solitary, so lonely, standing highlighted on the steering platform. I want him to know that I prefer to be confined here, to this ship, with him, for all eternity, than on land when my heart was across the sea with him.

I cross the deck slowly, my slippers eerily quiet on the planks compared to my high-heeled boots. While I'm going up the stairs he catches sight of me and turns around. He smiles softly.

"Elizabeth? What are you doing up?"

I smile back, wrapping one arm around his waist. "It's cold without you."

He braces the wheel with the wooden stay and wraps both of his arms around me, resting his chin in my hair. I feel his jaw move as he speaks. "Did I make the right decision?"

I turn my head so my cheek rests on his chest. "What do you mean?"

"I shouldn't have confined you here. I should have given you a choice to go back to land."

"Will, my life on land was time spent waiting for you."

He takes me by the shoulders and holds me out to study me. "You're sure."

I just say, "Yes."

He pulls me in again. "I'm glad you can't leave anymore."

I pause before I reluctantly pull away. "Will, we need to find Davy Jones."

He sighs and runs his hands down my arms. "Elizabeth. It's not that simple."

"I made a promise to Calypso, Will."

"What kind of promise?" He frowns.

I sigh. "Just that we would try."

He turns away, facing the bow and the moon on the horizon. "Elizabeth." A sigh. "I would go after him if I could. But if I turn my course, I could doom the ship—and the crew—in one move."

"Will, you know what it's like to lose someone you love." My voice softens. "You know what she's going through. In her place, would you do anything you could to get me back?"

"Of course I would," he says. But he doesn't look at me. "But what if there's nothing I _can_ do?"

"There has to be something!" I look forward, too, as though I'll find answers there.

"Maybe there is." He turns back to me. "And maybe there isn't. But I promise you this: if there's anything I can do, any opportunity I have, I promise I will take it."

I meet his eyes and I see sincerity there. "Okay."

He smiles again. His mouth opens to speak but I stop him, kissing him softly, remembering how far away he had looked silhouetted in the moonlight. He pulls me in tightly again.

_Stay_, I think.

And he does.


End file.
